1968, 2008: ‘Wars Don’t Die’
Survivors of Catonsville Nine mark anniversary with a protest
Forty years ago today, nine Catholic men and women - three of them priests - walked into a military draft office in Catonsville and seized the records of hundreds of young men likely to be summoned to fight in Vietnam.
They burned the papers in the parking lot, using homemade napalm to start the blaze. As the flames rose, the nine solemnly recited the Lord’s Prayer and stood around waiting for the police to arrest them.
That day in the turbulent spring of 1968, the Catonsville Nine, as they became known, put the quiet Baltimore suburb on the map in a growing nationwide protest against the Vietnam War. The band of activists - whose dramatic trial drew hundreds of antiwar protesters to Baltimore that fall - inspired similar disruptions of draft offices around the country.
The Catonsville Nine also provoked an intense debate, one that has resonated across the decades as Americans challenge another unpopular war - this time in Iraq.
“I think what people are seeing is that the wars don’t die,” said one of group’s leaders, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, now 87 and living in New York. He and his late brother Philip, also a priest at the time, became prominent figures in the peace and social justice movements.
Some saw the fire the Nine ignited - and their subsequent imprisonment - as a courageous act of conscience, inspired by Christian faith. But others have questioned the morality - or at least the effectiveness - of vandalism, no matter how noble the cause.
Today, the Catonsville Nine are down to five. Philip Berrigan, the only member who stayed in Baltimore, died of cancer in 2002 after decades of “civil resistance,” repeated arrests and imprisonment for his protests against war, militarism and social injustice.
Two others predeceased him - one in a car accident before his prison sentence was to start.
The most recent of the group to go was artist Tom Lewis, who died unexpectedly last month at his Massachusetts home, a month before a planned visit to Baltimore for a commemoration of the 1968 event.
The passion lives
But the passion for peace still burns in the survivors and their spiritual heirs as they seek to rally opposition to another war.
Elizabeth McAlister, Philip Berrigan’s widow, will join a group of activists who plan to mark today’s 40th anniversary with a muted protest at the annual air show at Andrews Air Force Base.
A decade ago, protesters attacked a B-52 bomber there with hammers. This time, they say, they’ll wield only peace slogans on T-shirts as they seek to mingle in the crowd of families visiting to ogle the warplanes.
“I think actions like this create hope,” said McAlister, 68, taking time from chores at Jonah House, the pacifist community she and Philip Berrigan established in West Baltimore. “And being able to share with people about that creates hope.”
Catonsville wasn’t the first draft office raid. Philip Berrigan and three others were already awaiting sentencing for pouring blood on draft records at the Custom House in downtown Baltimore in fall 1967. They decided to do it again.
“That was the way to show the government that no matter how many people you lock up, you’re not going to get us out of your hair,” recalled George Mische, another of the Nine who, like Philip Berrigan, was an Army veteran.
Mische said the group looked at three local draft board sites before settling on the western Baltimore suburb.
“There was no special signficance to Catonsville,” said Dean Pappas, a Baltimore physics teacher who helped plan the draft office raid and spread the word after it happened. “It was just a target of opportunity.”
Symbolism of site
But Mische and others saw symbolism in the draft board’s location on the second floor of the Knights of Columbus hall, a Catholic fraternal organization. They believed church leaders were abdicating their Christian responsibilty to speak out against the war.
Mische said the group also picked Catonsville because it would be “virtually impossible” for anyone to get hurt. But one person did, albeit slightly. Mary Murphy, the head of the office, cut her finger and scratched her leg while wrestling for control of a wire wastebasket containing the seized draft records.
Mische said Murphy also ripped his pants apart, trying to pull him away from the draft files, and another clerk threw a telephone through a window after protesters thwarted efforts to call police. The breaking glass and screaming alerted a groundskeeper outside, who summoned authorities.
Meanwhile, a TV news crew and photographer, who had been tipped off to show up, captured the burning of 378 draft records on black-and-white film with shaky sound.
The Catonsville Nine might have been 10 had McAlister, then a young nun, agreed to join the group that day. “I wasn’t ready,” she said. “I was too young, and it was too new.”
After the episode, she secretly married Philip Berrigan and was arrested at a Delaware draft office, the first in a series of legal run-ins that at one point took her away from her children for two years. All three of their offspring, she said proudly, are activists in their own ways today.
The Berrigans and McAlister have inspired many others, including Frank Cordaro, a 57-year-old former priest from Des Moines, Iowa, who is in Baltimore this week to commemorate the Catonsville protest.
Ten years ago, on the 30th anniversary, Cordaro joined four others who tried to damage the B-52 bomber at Andrews. That cost him six months in jail, less than he expected.
“The survival of the human race really depends on the human race deciding to put away its violent and war-making ways,” said Cordaro, whose affable demeanor belies the seriousness of his cause. “We Christians have a major contribution to play, not least of all because in the last 100 years, we have become the best killers.”
But critics like Stephen H. Sachs, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the Catonsville Nine, argue that such illegal acts undermine the rule of law.
‘Intolerable position’
“No one can, and no one did, at the time, contest the sincerity, one might even say the bravery, of these folks,” said Sachs, who later became Maryland’s attorney general and ran unsuccessfully for governor.
But he described them as “true believers who believe they were Right with a capital ‘R’ and were entitled … to take the law into their own hands. In a democracy, that’s an intolerable position.”
Brendan Walsh, who helped with the Catonsville draft office raid, said he agrees that people can’t go around destroying everything they hate.
“However, if there’s property that has no other reason for being than to get people killed, then maybe … it’s OK to go ahead and destroy it,” said Walsh, who in 1968 helped open Viva House, a Catholic worker community in Baltimore that offers a soup kitchen, legal aid and after-school education for the poor.
Other activists, though no less committed to ending war, say they’re looking for different ways to achieve that end.
Mische, for one, is more committed to change through politics than to symbolic, illegal actions. These days, he says, he’s focusing on supporting the presidential bid of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. He likes the Democratic hopeful’s stance on the war, as well as his background as a community organizer.
Dean Pappas, now 69, has also parted ways with the tactics of 1968. “I think that Phil and company, [spending] the last 20 years smashing nose cones on missiles and getting thrown in jail was a waste of time,” he said. “I hate to put it that way, but I don’t think it did much to advance the cause.”
Now a teacher at Friends School and Maryland Institute College of Art, Pappas is likewise backing Obama’s campaign.
McAlister, though, says she has no regrets. “I think it’s right and needed,” she said of the confrontations, “and the effectiveness … will take care of itself. … I think they make people think and question.”
Sun researchers Paul McCardell and Carol Julian contributed to this article.
Click here for a video of the Catonsville Nine burning draft records on May 17, 1968.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
This is the sort of thing I mean when I said question our tactics in the other item on the peace marches being studiously ignored by the Cheney junta. Some things can’t simply be ignored, destroying the records of those about to be deployed is one of them, records are on computers now…
Sister Liz - Loved ya then, love ya now. Thanks for keeping up the good work.
Actions like these always inspired me and they continue to do so!
Without dissent there is no democracy. Democracy without dissent, even to extremes, is nothing more than the tyranny of conformity.
In our culture we are indoctrinated to believe that property is sacred, even more sacred than human life. Why aren’t the the actions of the Catonsville 9 judged by the lives that they were trying to save?
Another example is the WTO in Seattle in 1999. The actions of 10’s of thousands of people were condemned due to the actions of a very few who broke a handful of windows -of not just any business-but specifically of multinational corporations who benefit from the WTO (eg Starbucks, Nike etc.). It was not random violence.
The media focused on property damage, instead of on why these people were doing what they were doing. If it wasn’t property damage they would have found something else to distract people from the real issues.
Yaay Liz!
All sorts of actions are effective to show that people care, to show that people are willing to suffer (because others are suffering). Some go whole hog. Some give of their careers and lives. Some vigil.
Notable exception: W. Bush’s giving up golf in solidarity with the troops in Iraq (except he broke his vow and played twice) was not the most effective action to show that he cared.
I stand in awe of such courage
shown for others.
For Phil, Dan, Liz and all the years
given for love.
You made us braver and do so still.
Such courage to love.
Such love is pure courage. I stand in awe of such love … shown for others.
Still.
Sister Elizabeth and Father Berrigan and uncountable Catholics who hold to normative Christian vision have likewise inspired ever growing ecumenical participation in living the message of peace, justice and the path of love. This continues all over the world with a voice that does not need the deaf ear or the muted voice of the mass media because the vision is alive and being lived.
The rule of law as noted by Sachs, however fails to make note of the Constitutional admonitions for citizen actions when administration(s) of the government itself is/are by their actions undermining the rule of law.
Accoding to George Santayana/Plato/Gen Douglas MacArthur, 4 of the Cantonsville Nine ‘have’ seen the end of war.
What the heck is the ‘the tyranny of conformity’?
If those who destroy a few records deserve a few months in jail for their actions, how much time in jail should those who cause the death and destruction of tens of thousands of lives and millions of homes get?
My hat is off to those courageous demonstrators at Catonsville who gave us a symbolic gesture as well as “saved lives” of at least SOME potential draftees who would have been FORCED to participate in an UN-democratically created war.
How crazy a statement US Attny. Sachs makes describing them as “true believers who believe they were Right with a capital ‘R’ and were entitled … to take the law into their own hands. In a democracy, that’s an intolerable position.”
I would like Sachs to name ONE war that was voted on by the entire voting population! Since we live in a so-called representative democratic republic I would like to know when was the first OR last time any elected politician EVER asked or met with their constituents (and I don’t just mean the MONIED campaign donors!!!) in a townhall situation to ASK whether or not that official should vote to enter our soldiers into a war!!
The crime here is that Americans are NEVER consulted about their opinions of entering into a war. So, what are we to do? I’d rather see a symbolic gesture opposing war (even if property were destroyed) than to see coffins returning from some foreign land with American bodies in them. Where is the right of each person to make an informed decision about whether or not the war our “elected” officials (I live in Fla) have put us in is WORTHY of fighting in and for?
The day our voting citizens are allowed to consider fully what any war is about and what the possible consequences could be (like coming back w/o both legs, chemical poisoning, PTSD, no financial support for the rest of your life if you cannot work, no counseling, no GI bill benefits) is the day I will go along w/ Mr. Sachs and say in a democratic society people cannot take a stand against laws that they (the public) had a part in enacting!!!
Until then….. IF THE SPIRIT MOVES YOU DO IT !!!
“others have questioned the morality - or at least the effectiveness - of vandalism, no matter how noble the cause.
COMMENT:
If a giant bully wandered about a village of the weak and timid, killing people for their valuables on a daily basis with his sword and one day a few of the more courageous villagers slipped into his hut when he was temporarily away and broke the point off his sword and dulled the edge by battering it with rocks, that would be vandalism.
That would be morally wrong? Only to the sick of mind, the perverted of spirit, the immoral, and the blindly amoral - the kind of people who run the government and the kind of people who elect and support such a government.
“I think actions like this create hope,”
COMMENT:
This despite the fact that the percentage of protesters to barbarity dwindles every decade reminds me of a bumper sticker that said: “Nothing fails like prayer.”
heroes……….
I forgot to mention…..regarding Dean Pappas who is supporting Obama…I wonder if Mr. Pappas is aware of Mr. Obama’s main foreign policy advisor who was the architect for the Afghanistan/Russian war (who funded & armed our buddy bin Laden) Zbigniew Brzezinski….with advisors like this one voters had better know who and WHAT they are voting FOR !!! Voters beware (and I am not supporting war monger Clinton in ‘08).
Years in jail not months.
Sach and Pappas are sellouts. Part of the system and the problem. Liking Obama’s war position is liking war for Wall Street. And Pappas says they didn’t do much to advance the cause while he goes around setting back the cause by joining the empire. Both are scumbags.
Hoa binh
One of the greatest disappointments in my life has been how quickly the lessons of Vietnam were forgotten. Even with the generation that grew up during the era now in charge. How easily everyone jumped on the good guy vs bad guy bandwagon with Dubya. How efficiently dissenters, even respected conservatives, were marginalized. The “freedom fries” thing. Its so disappointing, and scary.
so the former demonstrators are supporting obama? is that the same obama who claimed he would enter pakistan and deploy troops without their authority? by troops i mean soldiers who carry guns, point them at people and pull the trigger and people who lob bombs knowing that there will be ‘collateral’ damage…
i remember the berrigan brothers…i don’t remember sachs, mische and pappas…
long live the brave who dare to break the law to save lives and bring attention to the dastardly deads perpetrated in our name–noble cause my ass…….
I was a Vietnam war resister who served time in the Danbury federal prison with Dan and Phil Berrigan. They (who were 50 and 47 at the time) were great inspirations, sources of moral support, and role models for us - the handful of young resisters - and I have never been able to figure out how to repay them in the only manner that would be meaningful to them: by effective work for world peace.
There is an old joke about how to get what you want from a donkey - you speak to him gently, but only after you have clobbered him with a two-by-four to get his attention. The terrible dilemma of the Vietnam War opposition was that to get the jackass’s (media’s) attention you had to do things like destroying draft records that caused a lot of serious people to decide that you were irresponsible. Without such actions you were effectively voiceless, but what you had to do to be heard tended to make your voice come through as somewhat reckless and slightly insane: in effect, what you had to do to be heard tended to discredit your message. It was a bitter and frustrating Catch-22. It is often difficult for people - particularly those who weren’t around in the early days of the Vietnam War - to understand that no matter how unpopular the Vietnam war seems in retrospect there was a time when dissent was small and largely ignored, and getting any sort of anti-war message heard against the prevailing anti-communist hysteria was very difficult. I think you have to judge the actions of the Berrigans and their companions in light of this problem.
There is another serious dilemma for those who are dedicated opponents of political evils such as the worldwide agression promoted by the Cheney administration.
That is whether or not to participate in “mainstream” politics - the politics that are dominated by corporate interests and their media possessions. Either you support Barack Obama (or Hilary, if you believe that her core beliefs run counter to the positions she has been forced to take to be seen as a “viable” candidate) as the least thoroughly corrupted candidate who has a chance of winning the presidency and hope that their actual policies will at least be less evil than Cheney’s, or you abandon “mainstream” politics and effectively drop out of the system. Either you compromise with evil or you abandon any politically effective voice. Unfortunately, if there is a better option available I am not aware of it.
I think that anyone who is inclined to be critical of either the Berrigans or Mische and Pappas should consider that all choices available for opponents of war have serious drawbacks - there is no perfect (or perhaps even good) alternative.